NON-FICTIONPost-election analysis is still with us — see JOHN HEILEMANN & MARK HALPERIN's Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime (Harper, January 11). But the big news is the economy, stupid. Among dozens of titles trying to explain how we got where we are, look for Nobel Prize-winning economist JOSEPH E. STIGLITZ's Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy (Norton, January 18), which argues that we've foisted bad economic policy on everyone else, and MICHAEL LEWIS's thoroughly documented The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine (Norton, March 15).

In Bomb Power: The Modern Presidency and the National Security State (Penguin Press, January 21), GARRY WILLS traces George W. Bush's assault on the Constitution to the creation of the atom bomb, which gave the US president unprecedented power. In The Watchers: The Rise of America's Surveillance State (Penguin Press, February 18), SHANE HARRIS argues that Total Information Awareness, a surveillance program recommended by former National Security Adviser John Poindexter after 9/11 and banned by Congress in 2003, is still with us — somewhere in the black-ops underworld.

Current events got you down? Escape into history. Anglophiles, look for ALISON WEIR's The Lady in the Tower: The Fall of Anne Boleyn (Ballantine, January 5) and A. ROGER EKIRCH's Birthright: The True Story That Inspired "Kidnapped" (Norton, January 25), the latter about the abduction of young aristocrat Jemmy Annesley. American history lovers, try MARK LEE GARDNER's To Hell on a Fast Horse: Billy the Kid, Pat Garrett, and the Epic Chase to Justice in the Old West (Morrow, February 9) and MICHAEL O'BRIEN's Mrs. Adams in Winter: A Journey in the Last Days of Napoleon (Farrar, Straus, March 9), which tracks Louisa Catherine Adams's 1815 journey from St. Petersburg to Paris, where husband John Quincy Adams had been transferred.

In The Long Way Home: An American Journey from Ellis Island to the Great War (Harper, March 16), DAVID LASKIN reveals that one in five US soldiers during World War 1 was born abroad; fighting made them Americans. For thoroughgoing background on that war, consider MIRANDA CARTER's George, Nicholas, and Wilhelm: Three Royal Cousins and the Road to World War I (Knopf, March 14). JEFF SHESOL addresses an important between-the-wars issue in Supreme Power: Franklin Roosevelt vs. the Supreme Court (Norton, March 22); RICHARD REEVES's Daring Young Men: The Heroism and Triumph of the Berlin Airlift — June 1948–May 1949 (Simon & Schuster, January 5) celebrates those who delivered 2.3 million tons of supplies to Berlin during the post-WW2 blockade.

Bancroft Prize winner IRA BERLIN's The Making of African America: The Four Great Migrations (Viking, January 21) explains how the Middle Passage, the shift to the South's interior, the eventual migration north, and today's arrival of black populations from abroad have all shaped African-Americans. NELL IRVIN PAINTER counters with The History of White People (Norton, March 15), which is really the history of an idea. In The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (Crown, February 2), REBECCA SKLOOT recounts how doctors took cells from the African-American Lacks without her knowledge and used them to create the first immortal human cell line grown in a culture. Big issues here, for science and ethics.

Coffeenomics In 50 states and 49 countries, the experience is the same: a placid sense of place, air suffused with the rich aromatics of fresh-brewed espresso. Customers dollop cream and sprinkle brown sugar into their drinks. Behind the counter, green-clad baristas grind beans and steam milk, smiling as they take orders in a made-up language.

Reading is fundamentalist In 2009, liberals held firm control of the presidency, the US Senate, and the US House of Representatives. But there was one realm where conservatives dominated: the New York Times bestseller list.

Interview: Raj Patel "The opposite of consumption is not thrift but generosity; if you look at happiness studies, we are happiest when we give things away rather than when we accumulate or when we don't spend."

Heart keeps beating Storytelling is largely about character, and writer Thomas Cobb came up with a doozy when he conceived Bad Blake.

Interview: Ozzy Osbourne Long before he bit the heads off bats and doves, Ozzy Osbourne worked in a cheerless abattoir in the hardscrabble Aston section of Birmingham, England, where for 18 months he held such titles as "cow killer," "tripe hanger," "hoof puller," and "pig stunner."

Romney's new character: Macho man Few things are more predictable than a GOP presidential candidate posturing as a he-man protector of America, and depicting his Democratic counterpart as an effete, appeasing girlie-man on the dangerous world stage.

Infinite pleasure Admit it, fellow scribblers. You'd sell your soul to come up with an opening sentence like "Of the things we fashioned for them that they may be comforted, dawn is the one that works."

BOOK BAG FOR THE DOG DAYS | June 16, 2010 Planning to be lazy and let it all go this summer? Sorry, there are too many good books to read. From Allegra Goodman's The Cookbook Collector to Richard Rhodes's The Twilight of the Bombs and Jean Valentine's Break the Glass , you'll find tomes galore to keep you occupied through Labor Day.

BOOKING IT | March 11, 2010 Spring fiction goes international, starting with a whiff of the Caribbean.

BOOKED SOLID | January 04, 2010 The holidays are over — time to hit the books.

THE WHOLE TRUTH | September 14, 2009 It's the economy, stupid. Or maybe politics or literature. Fall non-fiction goes wide and deep, so plan for some marathon reading.

TALL TALES | September 14, 2009 This fall brings fiction and poetry lovers new treats from old friends.